Viewpoint The Battalion Monday Texas A&M University December 5, 1977 A bear and the bear A pregnant polar bear, wandering the icy steppes of Siberia, could well hasten the arrival of full detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. This is an American polar bear, which strolled across the Bering Strait recently from Alaska to Russia. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service experts in Barrow, Alaska, had attached a radio transmitter to the bear as part of a study of bears’ migratory habits. The transmitter is still emitting signals, which are picked up by U.S. satellites which beam the bear’s location to this country. American scientists have written their Soviet counterparts for permission to follow the bear’s trail into Siberia. President Brezhnev should grant such permission. It’s not a spy bear, we re almost sure. San Francisco Chronicle Iron Curtain doesn’t bar drug traffic By GUNTER HAAF United Writers Service WEST BERLIN — Drug addiction may be declining in the United States, but here in West Berlin, the use of narcotics is cur rently growing to crisis proportions. This may seem paradoxical, since this city of two million is an urban island encircled by Communist East Germany, which controls its borders. The rising drug problem indicates that the narcotics traffic transcends political frontiers. According to official estimates, there are some 5,00,0 heroin addicts in the city, many of them teenagers. Deaths from overdoses this year are expected to be nearly double those that occured in 1976. The number of crimes related to drug users has sharply increased as well. A judge who handles such cases calculated a couple of months ago that he had already dealt with twice as many addicts so far this year as he did during all of last year. The drug business is said to run to more than $155 million annually. The problem stems in part from immi grant Turkish workers, invited here as un skilled labor, who serve as a conduit for drugs grown and refined in their native land. Major narcotics dealers have also moved here from Amsterdam, once the European drug capital, where police have been cracking down lately. Efforts to restrict the traffic have suf fered from the refusal of the East German authorities to cooperate. The Communists are apparently unconcerned by the prob lem as long as it does not spill out of West Berlin into their territory. One important drug channel is Inter- flug, the East German airline, which flies into East Berlin’s Sehonefeld airport. In order to earn hard currency, the air line offers cheap fares, and it is therefore popular with Turkish workers. Thus couriers carrying narcotics can land in East Berlin and cross easily into the Western zone of the city with their merchandise. Not long ago, West Berlin officials asked the Communist regime to check transit passengers more thoroughly. The reply was a blunt refusal, accompanied by a lec ture to the effect that the West had always favored free movement of peoples. Unable to seal the city. West German police have been intensifying their drive against drug peddlers. But their progress has been uneven. They have managed to eliminate the drug scene at Technical University, for merly a big narcotics center. But they have hardly made a dent in Jahnpark, an area resembling New York’s Central Park, where drugs are traded openly. Here as elsewhere, addicts raise money for their habit from crimes of various kinds. About a third of the city’s addicts are women, who finance their habit through prostitution. One couple, both addicts, resorted to a unique device to ac quire funds. They got married, thereby claiming the $5,000 government bonus paid to newlyweds. Officials here are only beginning to de velop some idea of the junkie population from studies done by four psychologists working with data obtained by a Catholic drug counseling bureau. They have discovered that both boys and girls, ranging in age from 12 to 16, generally go directly into heroin usage without having started on milder narco tics. A high percentage are school and job drop-outs. Groups of reformed addicts and church activists who are trying to grapple with the problem accuse the West Berlin au thorities of inefficiency in coping with the crisis. Horst Bromer, a psychologist with the Catholic organization “Caritas,” contends for example that the city has not built enough facilities to treat addicts. Many of those who want treatment, he says, have to wait as long as three months to enter therapy — by which time they backslide into addiction. Reacting to the criticism, city officials are attempting to initiate emergency mea sures, some of which are controversial. A plan to distribute Methadone, has been at tacked on the grounds that it merely sub stitutes one ch ug for another. Officials are also worried that even if they are successful in dealing with heroin, they may find themselves confronted by different narcotics. They have already come across cocaine, and they fear that it may become as fashionable here as it is in New York. So there seems to be no end in sight to West Berlin’s narcotics scourge. Citizens here are becoming accustomed to cases of adolescents found dead of overdoses. These are a reminder of the possibility that this city, which has survived so much in its quest for security, is being eroded inter nally by an enemy it never anticipated. (Haaf writes on science for Die Zeit, the West German weekly.) The $2 bill: A Treasury turkey By DICK WEST United Press Internationa] WASHINGTON — The $2 bill, reis sued in April 1976, has bombed badly. If it had been a Broadway production, it would have closed Saturday night. On paper, the bill looked good. Like everything else these days, the The Lighter Side cost of printing money is on the rise. Sim ple arithmetic will tell you it’s cheaper to make one $2 bill than it is to make two $1 bills. So the Bureau of Engraving and Print ing ran off about 527 million with the ex pectation of saving maybe $5 million a year. At last count, however, only about 220 million were in circulation. Meanwhile, the demand for $1 bills has continued to grow apace. Despite overwhelmingly evidence that it has a real turkey on its hands, the Trea sury Department keeps trying to improve the bill’s image and thus salvage its in vestment. Letters to the editor The latest effort along that line is an agreement with food store chains to dis tribute $2 bills to their customers in cer tain areas. If public resistance remains high, the government presumably will try some thing else. I’m certainly no currency expert but from long experience I do know something about public relations gimmicks. Here are a few that might boost the bill’s popularity: Contests — Fill goldfish bowls with $2 bills, place them in store windows and offer prizes to the people who come closest to guessing how much money the bowls contain. , , , It might be easy to estimate that a bowJ contains, say 836 bills. But that’s just half of it. To hit the correct monetary sum, a contestant must remember to double that Public Service Announcements — All sorts of celebrities donate their services to plug worthwhile causes on radio and tele vision. I’m sure the Treasury Department could line up a wonderful group to endorse the $2 bill. “Hi, this is movie star Burt Reynolds asking you to join the crusade against cur rency glut. “Did you ever stop to think that carry ing around a fat, overstuffed wallet im poses an extra burden on your heart and also may cause you to walk lopsided? “The U.S. Treasury Department wishes me to remind you that you can reduce wal let bulge up to 50 percent by switching to trim new $2 bills. Superstition — Arrangements are made for Reggie Jackson of the New York Yan- es to carry a $2 bill in his pocket during wie the World Series. If he breaks the home run record, word gets around that a $2 bill brings good luck. If he strikes out, he is traded to the State Department to plug the Panama Canal Treaty. The whichs & whys of letters to the editor Editor: Are there any other issues besides last Saturday’s game with t.u. that people write the editor about? Or does the Battal ion push the same issue for a whole week, until the letters seem repetitous. What is the use of having letters to the editor if they aren’t worth reading after the second time they’re printed? Chris Glaeser, ’80 know that it comes in many shapes and sizes. I wish to comment on a certain kind of spirit that seems to me to be quite lack ing of the true Aggie style we are all so proud of. It is in the area of giving rides to fellow Aggie that I wish to complain. Although I am just a freshman, I know that Aggies are the most helpful and the friendliest people around. It comes natural to most Aggies. That is why I never fail to ask anyone walking if they need a ride. It would seem that all these friendly fellow Aggies would do the same as I, but it has been my experience that this is not the case. When Town Hall presented Ronnie Milsap and Asleep at the Wheel in concert last week, there were thousands of Ags there. Why then did not one of these “true Ags” offer my girlfriend and myself a ride? The weather was very chilly and a ride would have been very much appreciated. This incident leaves me very reluctant to pick up any more of my fellow Aggies whether it be freezing rain or sweltering heat! I am proud to be an Aggie, how about you? If you are, then how about showing it by being a little more friendly with your car;J —John Caswell, ’81 Lectures need pizzaz Editor: The Texas A&M math department seems to be receiving a lot of heavy criti cism from its students. I can understand their criticisms after seeing the statistics on failures in your recent article “Percent age failures higher for freshman math courses.” Twelve and 18 percent failures, (not to mention “Q-drops) in Math 209 and 210 is not at all impressive figures for an institution of higher education known throughout the world for producing good engineers. Several reasons, for this upset were given in the article by math faculty mem bers but one very important reason was overlooked. I believe that an interaction between the professor on a more personal basis would be very helpful in promoting a more productive learning environment. From what I have heard and seen, there is definitely a lacking in this area. It is hard to listen to a calculus lecture in which the prof is speaking and writing solely from his notes. Dr. Blakely said, “math, intrinsically, is fairly hard and exacting,” as a reason for the bad grades. This is a valid reason but does not solve the problem. The solution will come by the prof add ing personality to his lecture. Students need to have a clear mind to handle hard- to-grasp, abstract concepts and this will help. A display of personality dispells fear as well as apathy, factors which clutter mental clarity. I suggest this as a motto for the A&M math department to aide them in bringing up the bad grades made by their students: “a little bit of sugar (per sonality) will help the lectures go down.” Robert Achgill Bus system a rip-off Editor: I will get straight to the point. I think the shuttle bus system is a rip-off. At the beginning of the semester there were 7006 passes issued. I was told that some of the passes were refunded. But still, at $20 a pass, the systems income is around $140,000. In addition to this, I have learned that a small portion of the student service fees that we all pay, goes to the shuttle bus system. If you figure a mere two cents from each students’ fee going to the bus system and you take into account that there are about 28,000 students enrolled in A&M, you come up with a mere $5600. Of course I am taking into account that the buses need gas and maintenance and the drivers need to be paid. But still the $20 pass fee doesn’t seem fair. I would also like to point out that there are not any covered shelters at any of the bus stops, other than the ones on campus. So if it’s raining and you don’t have any decent rain gear, you might as well suck it up. My main gripe is that the drivers never arrive at the bus stops on an exact time schedule. So you never can tell when you’ll get on campus. I have missed class many a time because of an early or late bus. Sure, the answer to my problem is to get out to the bus stop earlier. But what do we pay $20 a semester for? I assume that the system was estab lished to help with the parking problem on campus. Well, if it was, I think the system might have to shape up, or look for another solution to the parking problem. — J.C. Editor’s note: Well Chris, we just try to print what people send us. Yes, we have received an overwhelming amount of mail about that particular game — far more letters than would be practical to print. No, we don’t “push” any issue. We try very hard to print as many letters to the editor as possible. When we can’t print them all, we try to provide a representa tive sampling of what we receive. If we get 15 letters about the game and one each about University shuttle buses, tele phone service and the City Council, you’re going to see more letters about the game. But we’ll try to get those others in, too. When an issue is getting talked to death — say we run letters every day, four days in a row, on the same issue — we ll stop printing letters about that issue. That is, unless a letter has something really unique to say or unless letters on that issue keep coming in. We stopped print ing letters on the Texas game Friday. Thumbing along Editor: What is Aggie spirit? '' v ■11. i t A ;